WATERTOWN — UConn hockey coach Mike Cavanaugh, after discussing reasons for a rather flat performance Friday night against Sacred Heart, ended with praise for the opponent and a succinct analysis of his own team's play.

"It wasn't awful," he said. "It's not like it was a god-awful effort."

Just minutes earlier, Cavanaugh tried to make one point clear to his players: On any night, against any team, it's usually going to take something more than it-could-have-been-worse.

That was the case Friday as the Huskies were blanked by Sacred Heart, 2-0, in a non-conference game before a sellout crowd of 850 at the Taft School.

"I told the kids the margin of error in college hockey is so slim and if you don't compete harder than the other team, you can get humbled pretty quickly," Cavanaugh said. "They just out-worked us. We didn't play well. We weren't in rhythm, weren't in sync and we got outplayed."

UConn (2-5-3) was coming off a week in which it defeated Boston College and tied Boston University, games in high-profile settings against teams with national championship pedigrees.

Then came Friday, which brought a matchup against an old Atlantic Hockey rival in a small, cold building on a prep school campus. Drew George scored for the Pioneers 3:26 in, taking a pass from Ben Lake, and that was all goalie Andrew Bodnarchuk needed for his first career shutout. Zach Luczyk scored an empty-netter with 42 seconds remaining.

"I think there was an extra preparation in our game for BC and BU, and I think Sacred Heart brought that same preparation into this game against us," UConn senior forward Trevor Gerling said. "I don't know if we took them lightly or if we were overlooking them, but the effort was just not what we [need]."

Each team had 29 shots on goal but the Pioneers (4-5-2) were more active as the game went on, earning just the second victory in program history over a Hockey East team (2-11-1). The other was an upset of top-ranked UMass Lowell in the first game of last season.

"We tried to stay inside the dots and try to protect, on an Olympic-size sheet, from the middle out," Sacred Heart coach C.J. Marottolo said. "Our D did a great job and our forwards did a hell of a job getting back. Any time you get a win against a team — UConn had played very well, had some big wins coming in — sure, it's going to give us momentum. It sets a standard for where we need to be and what we could be. Our guys are fired up."

UConn, which is now 1-2 against state teams with a victory over a Quinnipiac and a loss to Yale, leads the all-time series with Sacred Heart 29-27-5. The teams split four games last year, when both were in Atlantic Hockey.

"I don't think it was a matter of us taking them lightly," Cavanaugh said. "It was a matter of a team, a pretty good team, outplaying us. We had a decent first period [14 shots] with some good chances, had a good power play there. But after that, we didn't generate a lot of offense, we bobbled pucks, we didn't play clean. They just outplayed us."

UConn put together stretches of sustained pressure but missed the net, failed to connect on passes and had shots blocked by defensemen or snared by Bodnarchuk.

"They weren't getting great scoring opportunities," Bodnarchuk said. "It was up into my chest or into a pad, or where I could get a stick on it. And there weren't many second chances."

The game was for the benefit of the family of longtime youth-hockey coach Jason Pagni, whose wife and two daughters took part in the ceremonial puck-drop. Pagni was killed in a car accident in January.

UConn moves on to three games at the XL Center: Tuesday against RPI, Friday against Vermont, Saturday against BU.

"We have to compete better," captain Ryan Tyson said. "Every guy has to be doing their job, playing their part and working towards getting a team win. I don't think we had everybody working in that direction."